Songs Of The Day 7/15/2015: Roy Wood – “Oh What a Shame” + “Any Old Time Will Do”

Playing With Myself: One-Person Recordings – I started a Facebook Group for Roy Wood & Wizzard. I don’t think I’ve looked at it since I started it, which was quite some years ago. I tend to do that: start web communities, throw a couple of one-liners up there for fun, then never look at them again. Subsequently boatloads of fans who feel the same way I do about a particular person, band, object or philosophical construct sign up for the group, and I trust they have as much inherent respect for the social contract that they’ll all just keep contributing to it, while my Klout score* increases tenfold while I sit back and count the Monopoly money. Anyway, the point being, if you want to join the Roy Wood & Wizzard Facebook Group, by all means hop on over. I’ll never acknowledge you for anything you choose to do on that page, but I figure that’s a lot like the professional world or religious cults.

ANYWAY, Roy Wood is fantastic. He was a founding member of the nearly Google-proof group The Move, as well as Electric Light Orchestra, although he only appeared on the first two albums (and barely at all on the second). In Wizzard and as a solo artist he harkened back to the rock music of the ’50s and ’60s fairly routinely. He was a Brian Wilson disciple like all of us, which you’ll be able to discern almost immediately in “Oh What a Shame.” His albums Boulders (featured here before) and Mustard were both one-man band affairs. Today’s songs are both from the most recently reissued version of Mustard, which I’m afraid you won’t find on any of the streaming services that are suddenly popular. Although I’m pretty confident “Any Old Time Will Do” is entirely within the one-man limit, I can’t tell whether the female answer voice in “Oh What a Shame” is another person, or if it’s Wood doctoring his own voice up to sound like a totally different person. A woman, namely. But none of my foolproof sources tell me anyone else is involved with the record. That’s all right. I feel I’ve earned the right to a technicality this week anyway. Please buy more Roy Wood records.

*(Are Klout scores still a thing? 'Cause mine's pretty good. I'd hate to think that I stepped on all the little people for no good reason.)